CALENDAR - reference manual online

Reminder service.

Chapter

September 13, 2011

CALENDAR(1) BSD General Commands Manual CALENDAR(1)NAME
calendar — reminder service
SYNOPSIS
calendar [-ab] [-A num] [-B num] [-l num] [-w num] [-f calendarfile] [-t [[[cc]yy]mm]dd]
DESCRIPTION
The calendar utility checks the current directory or the directory specified by the
CALENDAR_DIR environment variable for a file named calendar and displays lines that begin
with either today's date or tomorrow's. On Fridays, events on Friday through Monday are
displayed.
The options are as follows:
-A num Print lines from today and next num days (forward, future). Defaults to one. (same
as -l)
-a Process the “calendar” files of all users and mail the results to them. This
requires superuser privileges.
-B num Print lines from today and previous num days (backward, past).
-b Enforce special date calculation mode for KOI8 calendars.
-l num Print lines from today and next num days (forward, future). Defaults to one. (same
as -A)
-w num Print lines from today and next num days, only if today is Friday (forward, future).
Defaults to two, which causes calendar to print entries through the weekend on Fri‐
days.
-f calendarfile
Use calendarfile as the default calendar file.
-t [[[cc]yy]mm]dd
Act like the specified value is “today” instead of using the current date. If yy is
specified, but cc is not, a value for yy between 69 and 99 results in a cc value of
19. Otherwise, a cc value of 20 is used.
To handle calendars in your national code table you can specify “LANG=<locale_name>” in the
calendar file as early as possible. To handle national Easter names in the calendars,
“Easter=<national_name>” (for Catholic Easter) or “Paskha=<national_name>” (for Orthodox
Easter) can be used.
A special locale name exists: ‘utf-8’. Specifying “LANG=utf-8” indicates that the dates
will be read using the C locale, and the descriptions will be encoded in UTF-8. This is
usually used for the distributed calendar files. The “CALENDAR” variable can be used to
specify the style. Only ‘Julian’ and ‘Gregorian’ styles are currently supported. Use
“CALENDAR=” to return to the default (Gregorian).
To enforce special date calculation mode for Cyrillic calendars you should specify
“LANG=<local_name>” and “BODUN=<bodun_prefix>” where <local_name> can be ru_RU.KOI8-R,
uk_UA.KOI8-U or by_BY.KOI8-B.
Note that the locale is reset to the user's default for each new file that is read. This is
so that locales from one file do not accidentally carry over into another file.
Other lines should begin with a month and day. They may be entered in almost any format,
either numeric or as character strings. If proper locale is set, national months and week‐
days names can be used. A single asterisk (`*') matches every month. A day without a month
matches that day of every week. A month without a day matches the first of that month. Two
numbers default to the month followed by the day. Lines with leading tabs default to the
last entered date, allowing multiple line specifications for a single date. “Easter” (may
be followed by a positive or negative integer) is Easter for this year. “Paskha” (may be
followed by a positive or negative integer) is Orthodox Easter for this year. Weekdays may
be followed by “-4” ... “+5” (aliases last, first, second, third, fourth) for moving events
like “the last Monday in April”.
By convention, dates followed by an asterisk (‘*’) are not fixed, i.e., change from year to
year.
Day descriptions start after the first <tab> character in the line; if the line does not
contain a <tab> character, it isn't printed out. If the first character in the line is a
<tab> character, it is treated as the continuation of the previous description.
The calendar file is preprocessed by cpp(1), allowing the inclusion of shared files such as
company holidays or meetings. If the shared file is not referenced by a full pathname,
cpp(1) searches in the current (or home) directory first, and then in the directory direc‐
tory /etc/calendar, and finally in /usr/share/calendar. Empty lines and lines protected by
the C commenting syntax (/* ... */) are ignored.
Some possible calendar entries (a \t sequence denotes a <tab> character):
LANG=C
Easter=Ostern
#include <calendar.usholiday>
#include <calendar.birthday>
6/15\tJune 15 (if ambiguous, will default to month/day).
Jun. 15\tJune 15.
15 June\tJune 15.
Thursday\tEvery Thursday.
June\tEvery June 1st.
15 *\t15th of every month.
May Sun+2\tsecond Sunday in May (Muttertag)
04/SunLast\tlast Sunday in April,
\tsummer time in Europe
Easter\tEaster
Ostern-2\tGood Friday (2 days before Easter)
Paskha\tOrthodox Easter
FILES
calendar File in current directory.
~/.calendar Directory in the user's home directory (which calendar changes into,
if it exists).
~/.calendar/calendar File to use if no calendar file exists in the current directory.
~/.calendar/nomail calendar will not send mail if this file exists.
calendar.all International and national calendar files.
calendar.birthday Births and deaths of famous (and not-so-famous) people.
calendar.christian Christian holidays (should be updated yearly by the local system
administrator so that roving holidays are set correctly for the cur‐
rent year).
calendar.computer Days of special significance to computer people.
calendar.croatian Croatian calendar.
calendar.discord Discordian calendar (all rites reversed).
calendar.fictional Fantasy and fiction dates (mostly LOTR).
calendar.french French calendar.
calendar.german German calendar.
calendar.history Miscellaneous history.
calendar.holiday Other holidays (including the not-well-known, obscure, and really
obscure).
calendar.judaic Jewish holidays (should be updated yearly by the local system adminis‐
trator so that roving holidays are set correctly for the current
year).
calendar.music Musical events, births, and deaths (strongly oriented toward rock n'
roll).
calendar.openbsd OpenBSD related events.
calendar.pagan Pagan holidays, celebrations and festivals.
calendar.russian Russian calendar.
calendar.space Cosmic history.
calendar.ushistory U.S. history.
calendar.usholiday U.S. holidays.
calendar.world World wide calendar.
SEE ALSO
at(1), cal(1), cpp(1), mail(1), cron(8)STANDARDS
The calendar program previously selected lines which had the correct date anywhere in the
line. This is no longer true: the date is only recognized when it occurs at the beginning
of a line.
COMPATIBILITY
The calendar command will only display lines that use a <tab> character to separate the date
and description, or that begin with a <tab>. This is different than in previous releases.
The -t flag argument syntax is from the original FreeBSD calendar program.
The -l and -w flags are Debian-specific enhancements. Also, the original calendar program
did not accept 0 as an argument to the -A flag.
Using ‘utf-8’ as a locale name is a Debian-specific enhancement.
HISTORY
A calendar command appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX.
BUGS
calendar doesn't handle all Jewish holidays or moon phases.BSD September 13, 2011 BSD